yardfowl

Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word yardfowl. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word yardfowl, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say yardfowl in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word yardfowl you have here. The definition of the word yardfowl will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofyardfowl, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
See also: yard fowl and yard-fowl

English

Etymology

Yardfowl (sense 1) – chickens raised in a yard

From yard +‎ fowl. Sense 2 (“political sycophant”) may allude to the tendency of chickens to gather around a person who is feeding them.

Pronunciation

Noun

yardfowl (plural yardfowl or yardfowls)

  1. A chicken raised in a yard.
    • 1744 July, William Ellis, “Of French or Buck Wheat”, in The Modern Husbandman, or The Practice of Farming, volume III, London: Printed for, and sold by, T Osborne, , and M. Cooper, , →OCLC, page 54:
      It alſo feeds Pheaſants, Partridges, Pidgeons, Yard-Fowls, &c., very expeditiously.
    • 1823, [Joseph-Philippe-François] Deleuze, “§ V. Collection of Birds.”, in History and Description of the Royal Museum of Natural History, Translated from the French , Paris: Printed for A. Royer, , by LT Cellot, , →OCLC, pages 365–366:
      On the third and fourth shelves are the different races of domestic fowls, and near them several wild species from India and the Moluccas. It cannot yet be decided from which of them our common yard fowls have sprung.
    • 1944, Peter De Vries, Angels Can’t Do Better, New York, N.Y.: Coward-McCann, →OCLC, page 177:
      What ravishments, inaccessible to us, may not be written there, where the awakened yardfowl carves her fluid sport, to remotest whispers of the eagle's flight.
    • 1983, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, editor, Tales by Moonlight, New York, N.Y.: Tor Books, →ISBN, page 83:
      By then Torin had used Brinda's pebbles to buy wine, bread, and a little yardfowl meat, so he had to give her their worth in other toys.
    • 1995 July, Pat Conroy, chapter 27, in Beach Music, New York, N.Y.: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, →ISBN; trade paperback edition, New York, N.Y.: Dial Press, 2009, →ISBN, page 421:
      Then he dragged her and kicked her naked out into the yard before the eyes of the yard fowl and mule and two stricken, terrified children.
    • 1996, Marc Sebanc, Flight to Hollow Mountain, Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, →ISBN, page 57:
      Oh, how pleased will Cromus be to read the boy's intestinal fortitude – a deal more accurate than the innards of yardfowl, he claims; they're sure to unblock those dream paths, as he calls them, [...]
  • 2007 December 7, Eutille E. Duncan, chapter 1, in In a Fine Castle, Bloomington, Ind., Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire: AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 5:
    [D]ozens of persons were awaiting the boat in order to load huge hands of ‘green fig’, plantains and mafoubay, baskets of blue dasheen, ‘renter’ yam, yellow yam, cassava and sweet potatoes, parcels of finely ground farine, bags of wet sugar, cages of ‘yard fowl’, tightly tethered hogs, sheep and goats which would be taken to Trinidad to be bought by the Marketing Board and private traders that would be waiting at the docks in Port-of-Spain.
  • (Barbados, politics) A political sycophant.
  • 2009, Ronald A. Williams, chapter 6, in Four Saints and an Angel, Pittsburgh, Pa.: Dorrance Publishing Company, →ISBN, pages 40–41:
    A yardfowl, according to Marjorie's St. Euribian dictionary of standard dialect, is anybody who t'ink dat being able to call de prime minister by he first name is a paycheck. In other words, a total jackass.
  • 2015 May 2, “Editorial: ‘Yardfowl’ here to stay”, in The Daily Nation, Bridgetown, Barbados: Nation Pub. Co., →OCLC, archived from the original on 18 March 2020:
    The loathsome use of "yardfowl" has really never been meant to describe the average member of any political party in Barbados. [...] So "yardfowls" are generally not the people who will attend the party caucuses or the constituency meetings to ask questions and seek answers. Instead, you would expect those so designated, even by leading members of the political parties, to be the leading hecklers of opponents and to be mindlessly singing the praises of those whom they favour. Their refrain: "Talk yuh talk, I wid you all the way." They represent a unique vociferous brand.
  • 2017 November 3, “The 1929 Anti-Corruption Act”, in Barbados Today, archived from the original on 18 March 2020:
    I was completely paralyzed by the wealth of idiocy on display this week and the complete intellectual impoverishment taking place in this country. Sadly, there is only one article per week and not every yardfowl is worthy of a decent or printable response.
  • Alternative forms

    Derived terms

    Translations

    Anagrams